Rand Paul In '08: Beware The NAFTA Superhighway! (VIDEO)

Campaigning for his father in Montana back in 2008, Rand Paul spoke out against the NAFTA Superhighway, encouraging Congress to stop the mythical project that would connect Mexico, the U.S., and Canada and, critics say, deal a fatal blow to American sovereignty. Long a bugaboo on some segments of the Right, the NAFTA Superhighway does not actually exist.

"It's gonna go up through Texas, I guess, all the way to Montana," said Paul, at an event in Bozeman. "So, it's a real thing, and when you talk about it, the thing you just have to be aware of is that, if you talk about it like it's a conspiracy, they'll paint you as a nut."

As was amply documented by The Nation a few years back, "There's no such thing as a proposed NAFTA Superhighway." It represents, Newsweek put it, "a strange stew of fact and fiction, fired by paranoia" that was popularized by Jerome Corsi, the man who spearheaded the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry in 2004.

The NAFTA Superhighway has been a pet issue of Paul's father, Ron Paul. In a 2006 column, Ron Paul wrote: "Proponents envision a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside. ... The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union - complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union."

In the Montana appearance, Rand Paul echoed his father's views, referring to the "Amero" (the Euro-style currency of the future North American Union), and saying "I guarantee you it's one of their long term goals to have one sort of borderless, mass continent."

He also mentions the Trans-Texas Corridor, which was a real project. But Paul enters myth territory when he says the corridor was "gonna go up through Texas, I guess, all the way to Montana."

Here's the video (start at :27). Transcript is below.

Q: What does Ron Paul want to do to fight the prospect of a North American Union and an Amero?

Rand Paul: Well I think publicizing it is the first thing, publicizing that it's going on. Trying to get the legislature to stop it, through official acts of Congress. You know any time he talks about it, though, the media tries to make fun of him as if it doesn't exist. But I think in Montana, your state legislature has talked about the North American Union. Texas has had several votes about the corridor, they just call it a different name, they call it the trans-Texas corridor.

Q: It comes right through here.

Rand Paul: Yeah, it's the same thing. It's gonna go up through Texas, I guess, all the way to Montana. So, it's a real thing, and when you talk about it, the thing you just have to be aware of is that, if you talk about it like it's a conspiracy, they'll paint you as a nut. It's not a conspiracy, they're out in the open about it. I saw the YouTube of Vincente Fox talking about the Amero. So, it's not a secret. now it may not be [inaudible] tomorrow, but it took 'em 20 or 30 years to get the Euro, and they had to push people kicking and screaming into the Euro.

But I guarantee you it's one of their long term goals to have one sort of borderless, mass continent.